[R] detecting EOF on connection?

[Andy Jacobson]

>>>>> "BDR" == Prof Brian Ripley <ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk> writes:

    Andy> Is there an easy way of determining whether one has reached the
    Andy> end-of-file when reading a connection?  I am reading a binary
    Andy> file and I would like to know when the read fails.

    BDR> When the readBin gives a 0-length result.  See the help file.

    Thank you for your response.  I may have a platform- and
    compiler-dependent bug to report.

    In my case readBin apparently does not return an object of zero
    length when reading past EOF.  This is on Mac OS X, for which
    recent gcc libraries have allegedly had a stream reading error
    that resulted in incorrect stream state at EOF.  This is very
    definitely the case for me with octave (www.octave.org) built on
    this machine.  I only know about this bug second-hand, and I'd
    appreciate a pointer to more information from anyone who knows
    more about it.  I've tested the case on a Linux machine and
    the problem goes away:  readBin at EOF returns an object of zero
    length there.

    This bug is supposedly fixed for gcc-3.3 on OS X, but we users of
    fink are in a catch-22 as we are strongly advised not to upgrade
    gcc past 3.1. (see http://fink.sourceforge.net).  I've been
    wondering how R-from-fink got around this problem.

    Reproducing the bug is problematic, as it only happens when I am
    reading a fairly large (0.6 MB) binary file.

    -Andy

-- 
Andy Jacobson

andyj at splash.princeton.edu

Program in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
Sayre Hall, Forrestal Campus
Princeton University
PO Box CN710 Princeton, NJ 08544-0710 USA

Tel: 609/258-5260  Fax: 609/258-2850